ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601120072
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: HELEN R. MacLEOD JOURNAL OF COMMERCE
It's late. It's dark. You're leaving an appointment at a client's office in a part of town you don't know in a remote industrial estate. Suddenly, a man leaps from the shadows with a knife and demands your briefcase and your watch.
Next morning, your boss needs some forms from your briefcase. Do you keep mum and get copies from your secretary or own up to the attack?
One of the leading international insurance groups says that honesty is the best policy.
Embarrassment and fear often prevent employees from properly identifying risks associated with violence in the workplace. And the workplace includes anywhere you are for work - whether it's the office party or a remote client's parking lot. We live in a violent world, and it is foolish to expect that violence to stay outside the workplace.
Chubb Group of Insurance Cos. has produced a video and workbook, titled ``Violence in the Workplace,'' designed to train employees in the insurance and financial services industries to identify and handle violent situations.
The 15-minute video, which is distributed by the Engineering and Safety Service division of the American Insurance Services Group Inc., suggests ways of lessening the risk.
The whole package leaves companies that choose to use it a great deal of scope to include their own methods for reporting incidents and for dealing with security. But it does give some strong pointers, particularly emphasizing the need for employees to ask for help and not try to deal with something like an irate and threatening customer alone.
Examples of possible situations, including the parking lot mugging, are portrayed in a series of scenes with actors on the video, intended to stimulate discussion.
Just because insurance is a profession and tends to be conducted in well-appointed offices under a corporate structure, that does not make it exempt from general dangers of violence.
The examples used include a scenario in which a claims handler is called up by a customer irate at having a claim turned down, who then arrives unannounced in her office, clearly aggressive and furious. Instead of calling security, the claims handler is conciliatory and tries to persuade the woman to sit down. Instead the woman rams the chair into the claims handler's knee.
It is suggested that the claims handler should have sought help immediately instead of trying to deal with the situation alone.
In the parking-lot mugging scenario, the man decides not to tell anyone about it at work the next day because he feels it was his own fault. The client had joked with him that usually his colleagues visited ``our remote little industrial estate'' in twos, so the man feels he should have taken precautions.
But Chubb points out that, by covering up the incident because of his own embarrassment, he may be putting other colleagues at risk.
In another scenario, the estranged husband of an insurance executive comes into her office, despite a restraining order, to argue about visitation rights regarding their son. The executive hurries him into her private office to avoid making a scene, and he ends up slapping her.
The worksheets argue that employees have a responsibility to warn their employers if there is some situation in their private lives that is likely to spill over into their professional lives. Human resources should be informed, in confidence, of such things as a restraining order against an estranged husband.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 linesby CNB